Thursday, 15 January 2015

Granule hardness/compressibility testing is
important to provide an indicator of the tabletting potential of some
materials, or a measure of friability or compaction strength of granules.

Where granules are irregular in form, the testing of single granules is discouraged as repeatability is compromised. In this instance, the testing of a fixed area of sample creates an averaging effect and improves the repeatability of the results.

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Breakfast cereals and snack foods such as tortilla chips, potato crisps, corn puffs and prawn crackers have many features in common, both in their manufacturing processes and in their product characteristics.

Many of these products are made from similar types of raw materials and tend to be processed as doughs at much higher temperatures than those used for conventional baked products.

Although the final products in the breakfast cereal and snack food markets are distinctly different in their appearance, they all tend to have low residual moisture contents and similar brittle crispy textures.

Performing textural magic with the use of new food preparation techniquesThe Croquanter Technique – creating crunchy fruit and vegetablesDehydrating
foods is a process which has been carried out forever but, more
recently, molecular gastronomy chefs have been using the dehydration
technique in very creative ways.

Crunchy Sheets is a technique developed
by molecular gastronomy Chef Ferran Adria to create a variety of shapes
of crispy sheets of ingredients such as fruit, vegetable and yogurt
with the addition of caster sugar, isomalt and/or glucose. The crunchy
sheets are made at relatively low temperatures (under 80°C) to preserve
the delicate aromas of the main ingredient and a dehydrator is used to
obtain the crunchy texture.